The Adventures of Pete and Pete’s Mr. Tastee Episode Is the Perfect Ode to Summer

[TMC]

https://www.eater.com/2018/8/30/1779...mer-tv-viewing

In the episode, the two red-headed brothers named Pete (Big Pete, played by Michael Maronna, and Little Pete, portrayed by Danny Tamberelli) become preoccupied with mysterious life of ice cream truck driver Mr. Tastee. In their suburb of Wellsville, it’s the first sighting of Mr. Tastee — a smiling swirl of vanilla soft serve with white gloves and a red striped suit — that marks the official start of the season. As Big Pete puts it, “No one knows who he is or where he comes from, but when that first really hot day in June rolls around you just know the Tastee Mobile is coming to the rescue.”

The Petes’ frequent sidekick Ellen (Alison Fanelli) starts her summer sweating it out in her uncle’s drive-through Qwik Pik photo booth, reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, until one day she stumbles across a packet of photos from Mr. Tastee. “Right in this envelope is our one chance to find out Mr. Tastee’s true identity,” she teases to the Petes, before noting that looking at the photos would be against the rules. But the contents of the package are far too tantalizing for the kids, and Little Pete rips it open to reveal the secret life of Mr. Tastee. As it turns out, Tastee’s stack of photos is filled with snapshots of his world travels in front of landmarks — though always while wearing the swirly mascot head, and always solo.

The moment is something akin to seeing your teacher outside of school, and turns Mr. Tastee into another one of the town’s eccentric characters, which includes a superhero named Artie, “the Strongest Man in the World”; a bully who’s signature trait is eating open-faced sandwiches; and the boys’ mother Joyce, whose metal plate in her head receives its own shoutout in the show’s opening credits. Through this summer boredom-driven invasion of privacy, the children make it their mission to forge a deeper relationship with the ice cream truck driver they barely know. Their efforts are ultimately rebuffed, and Mr. Tastee abruptly skips town.

In seemingly weather-based retribution for their crimes, a heatwave hits Wellsville and causes a Great Blue Tornado Bar panic. Hordes of sweaty, zombie-like children scream his name in the street. Others hallucinate Mr. Tastee and trade rumors about his whereabouts. Blind billionaire Mrs. Vanderveer (Kate Pierson of the B-52s) wonders around her yard apologizing to her former lover Leonard, aka Mr. Tastee. Tastee feels lost forever, until one day, during a staring contest with a queen bee atop a water tower, Artie spots the Tastee Mobile on the horizon.

The search for Mr. Tastee becomes the kids’ summer obsession. Ellen furiously stalks Mr. Tastee in a notably low-tech way, spotting his ice cream truck and mask in the background of Qwik Pik customer travel photos. Little Pete, meanwhile, keeps a lookout from the top of the diving board at the local pool while feuding with the lifeguard. Big Pete turns to good old fashioned detective work to find the wayward ice cream man, interviewing Cloghaven Beach’s Sludgesickle peddler Captain Scrummy (Michael Stipe of REM). It’s Scrummy who, beyond declaring Big Pete a “bonafide Sludgesickle man,” reveals how the kids violated the ice cream man-customer relationship. “Aren’t we here on the first hot day of every summer?” Scrummy asks. “Aren’t we? Don’t we carry 49 different flavorific flavors including Pineapple Blurt? What else do you want from us?” What else do we want from our ice cream truck drivers, indeed. “I don’t know anymore,” Big Pete concedes, acknowledging that Mr. Tastee might not come back.

Despite being on screen for only one episode, over the years, the plastic-headed Mr. Tastee has achieved a cult status worthy of his own T-shirt design. The episode is all the more remarkable given that it was technically the first 25-minute episode of the series. “What We Did on Our Summer Vacation” was actually designed as a back-to-school special when it aired back in September 1991, expanding the Pete & Pete universe beyond its original 60-second Nickelodeon vignettes. Series creators Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi have a knack for taking the strange things that happen naturally in the world and translating them into something even more delightfully absurdist through the eyes of a kid. Elsewhere in the episode, the boys’ father, Don Wrigley, unearths a fully functional 1978 Cutless Supreme at the beach while metal detecting; the universal feeling of childhood disappointment with end of summer vacation is channeled into Little Pete and Artie symbolically beating up the ocean; and an ice cream man simply doing his job becomes an elusive road trip fanatic with a secret identity.

This is a kids’ show of course, so Tastee does eventually return at the cusp of fall to pick up his photos. The ice cream man’s mystique is a metaphor for the spirit of the summer: wonderfully sweet, but temporary and melting away quickly. “I’m an ice cream man,” Tastee declares. “I am what the summer is — fireflies, thunderstorms, butt sweat on the car seat — and when it all goes, I have to go with it.”

Even if you’re an adult, even if you’re a sweater weather proselytizer, it’s easy to relate to that tug of loss in the final weeks of summer vacation. Without taking itself too seriously, it’s how the episode captures this sentimental moment — that feeling of another summer sliding into history — that makes “What We Did on Our Summer Vacation” such essential Dog Days viewing.